6 Burst results for "Allen Lane"
The Decrypt Daily: Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News Podcast
"allen lane" Discussed on The Decrypt Daily: Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News Podcast
"A hell of a day. It was a day that Brad Sherman dubbed SPF as inmate 14 three 7 two during the House financial services committee. But for this news, we have to go back to Monday, Monday, inmate 14 three 7 two, said that he will not appear at the House committee hearing because of the paparazzi effect. Then The Bahamas said, don't worry about anything. We'll got that for you. You don't have to appear. We'll just arrest you. And he did. In fact, get arrested. Inmate 14 three 7 two was charged with. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers, wire fraud or customers, conspiracy to commit wear frown on lenders. Wire fraud on lenders. Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud. Conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate campaign finance laws. Also, on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department, they were considering finding criminal charges against binance and CZ zhao. Prosecutors are divided, whether to move aggressively and quickly against the exchange or take more time to review the evidence. This is according to Reuters, citing four sources familiar with the matter. On Wednesday, inmate 14 three 7 two in extreme privilege and a delusional state of his surroundings and his situation told everybody that he's willing to accept house arrest, just I'm willing to. Don't worry about it. I'm willing to do this. I'm willing to accept house arrest. And he wanted the judge to give him low bail so he can sit at home and, you know, just think about things. And this is literally what he said literally. This is I'm not making this up. This person of extreme privilege and apparently things that he could do whatever the hell he wanted told the judge. I'm willing to accept house arrest. Well, the judge wasn't having it, he said, held to the gnaw called inmate 14 three 7 two a flight risk and ordered sandbank and freed to be sent to the country's Department of Corrections. Right now, rumor has it, he's sitting in a rat infested jail. But he's in good spirits, apparently. And what do we say about this? We don't really care, do we? Also on Wednesday we heard from SEC's Hester purse, she said that she has seen no real movement on the SEC crypto regulations, so she joined in 2018. And this goes to what the House financial service committee was asking, and the Senate was asking, how could this happen? I want to push it back to the legislators, the house, the Senate. Look, through the house and Senate hearings and I sat through quite a bit of it. I want to see probably about 60% of both of them. I never heard them take personal accountability and say, you know what? We dropped the ball. We didn't make any legislation. We knew this was happening. We didn't force the SEC or the CFTC or anybody to do anything. We didn't make any regulations we didn't propose any bills will be proposed bills, but there's bills just sitting there. We didn't move on anything. Just totally delusional. Total lack of personal responsibility, they are the legislators. Why didn't they not do anything? But now, everyone wants to try to figure out in point fingers that everybody else. This total dysfunction and finally on Wednesday, CZ jao told employees in a memo that he expects the next several months to be bumpy, and there'd be a lot of extra scrutiny and tough questions that they have to answer for. On Wednesday, binance customer draws exceeded $3 billion in 24 hours. Yesterday, Thursday, documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, revealed that FTX digital chairman tipped off authorities in The Bahamas about FTX using customer funds to cover losses at Alameda research. The executive director of the securities commission of The Bahamas sent requests to investigate, marked urgent to the commissioner of the royal Bahamas police force. On November 9th, 2022. FTX digital chairman told officials that client assets which may have been held with FTX digital were transferred to Alameda research and such transfers were not allowed and therefore made constitute as misappropriation, theft, fraud or other crime. He also told authorities that the only people who were able to transfer crime assets to Alameda and who had the necessary codes or passwords to do so was inmate 14 three 72, Sam beaten and freed, director of engineering, and cofounder Gary Wong. Also yesterday The White House refused to clarify whether it would return any political donations made to president Joe Biden by disgraced FTX founder. Sam Bateman freed. It also won't comment whether elected officials should return similar donations. And this was from The White House press secretary, karine, John Pierre. Crean jumpier also says she's barred from publicly discussing the subject, or the president's views on it, she said four times in that press conference that she's covered by the haj. What is the Hatch Act? Well, the Hatch Act is a federal law that aims to prevent government employees from engaging in political activities while on duty or using government resources. It applies to most executive branch employees as well as some state and local government employees. But does not apply to the president or the vice president. Violations of the Hatch Act can result in fines or removal from office. And moving into today's news. Now, I'm trying to experiment. This is not going to be the norm. I just want to be fully transparent about this because when I was really curious because I heard that Chad GPT can summarize different articles. And so I wanted to have it summarized articles for today's news. And so today's news is all summarized by Chet GPT written by chap GPT just because I want to play with it. Tell me what you think. Matthew and crypto CEO. Trust me, this is not what I'm going to do every week for every new show. I just want to try it. Here we go. FTX has filed a motion in the bankruptcy court of Delaware to seek approval for the sale of four independent solvent subsidiaries. The company is attempting to generate funds to repay its creditors, who it owes billions of dollars. The subsidiaries up for sale are in bed technologies, ledger X, LLC, FTX, Japan, and FTX Europe. The motion is scheduled for a hearing on January 11th, 2023. And the deadline for objections is December 29th, 2022. FTX has already received dozens of unsolicited bids for the subsidiaries, but the sale can not proceed without court approval. The deadlines for the bids for the difference subsidiaries range from January 18th of 23 to February 1st of 23. A class action lawsuit has been filed against silvergate bank, so get capital corporation and civil gate, CEO Allen lane, alleging that they aided and abetted the fraudulent activities of now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. The Sue claims that civil gate, a federally regulated bank, maintained accounts for both FTX and its affiliated company Alameda research and engaged in firsthand participation in the co mingling of funds in proper transference and lending out customer money. The suit also accused the defendants for making misleading statements and failing to disclose that the company's platform did not have sufficient controls and procedures in place to detect instances of money laundering. The suit comes after silvergate stock was downgraded by Morgan Stanley. And as we know a group of senators, including Elizabeth Warren, was sent a letter requesting information about silver Gates relationship with FTX and Sammy McFly entities. And finally today, coinbase is developing a tool that will allow users to recover their ERC 20 tokens that were previously thought to be permanently stranded after being sent to incompatible addresses associated with the exchange. The tool which will be available in the next few weeks will be able to recover 4000 unsupported tokens. The amount of lost tokens is unknown, but coinbase said it is a small fraction of the total transfers made. Users who want to recover their tokens will need to provide information about the transactions that led to the laws, and a small fee will be charged to recover the amount of over $100. It is not clear yet if the tool supported incompatible tokens beyond ERC 20s and will not be available in Japan or on coinbase prime.
Unchained
"allen lane" Discussed on Unchained
"Or how does that work? But the compliance team at the exchange, you know, in terms of FTX and Alameda were completely crooked. I mean, if anyone doesn't think that that's a criminal operation at FTX, something's terribly wrong with you. So FTX had no compliance. Alameda had no compliance. The chief regulatory officer at FTX was a poker a poker criminal. Right. Was the guy who cheated people in cart. He was the chief regulator. So assume there was no compliance at FDX and no compliance at all in the media. And it's come out that they commingled customer deposits as well. So at a minimum, when forensically everything gets unwound, someone is going to have their head so far up silver Gates ass. They're not going to be able to see. And every transaction will be scrutinized. Every transfer at the end of the day is going to get scrutinized here. So obviously, I mean, there was like 5 million investigations of FTX and Alameda, so regulators are clearly looking at that. But we'll regulators also probably enforce something on silvergate. That's kind of what I'm asking. The KYC program, and then we can just create more structure for this. So let me educate the audience here. So silver gate has to have a BSA AML program in accordance with the U.S. Patriot Act and bank secrecy act. So there's initial and then ongoing. Initial mean that there's a KYC and AML program also known as a sip program or customer identification program. And they'll have a very set of activities, including negative new screening, and they will subject their clients to what's called enhanced due diligence, particularly because in the crypto sector. They will take extra efforts above and beyond a bank opening up a non crypto account because of the nature and the potential for higher propensity of illicit activity. Then there's ongoing activity. So what the compliance team will do is they'll look at the nature of the customer's activities and they'll say, if there's a change in behavior, just to change in behavior, then they further policy and procedures should issue a suspicious activity report certainly notified their compliance team. That suspicious activity report would go to the regulator. And that's the standard framework for BSA and I'll compliant program. Now, the question is, were they in good standing, first of all, it's one way to look at it. Did the regulator view on silvergate change? I can say that they must have been in good standing. Here's why. First off, they bought DM, which was a stablecoin issued or intended to be issued by Facebook. That requires regulatory approval, regulators have to prove an M and a transaction. They would not approve that if they thought silver Gates, equity was at risk or that that business activity would be untoward in some way. Second, it has no public consent order, and they're permitted to grow their business. They have not been directed to curtail the activity. Lastly on the regulators, regulators, the FDIC has issued a non objection required meaning if you're a bank that you want to be active in crypto, you have to seek non objection for the regulator. Is active in crypto, which the inference is that they've obtained regulatory approval. And the regulars want to keep crypto activity within banks that they deem have appropriate systems that controls. They don't want to spill this up to other banks. They want to keep scrutiny. I agree with Mark that these transactions will be scrutinized. And the scrutiny will be around did silver gate faithfully apply and adhere to the stated policy and procedures in accordance with law one and two were those policy and procedures of sufficient stringency. That's really the analysis of the regulators will do office transactions. Your points are good, but the problem is they're as of or before 9 30 in the Titanic sank in November that the regulators nor no one saw coming. That's the problem. The problem is the analysis of this company is through the front window, the front windshield rather than the rearview mirror. And everything you talk about is rearview looking. Yeah, in the past, prior to 9 30, they were in accordance. I'd love I can not wait to see what they're going to report come 1231. I can't wait to see what those 12 hundreds are. And everyone is going to be beyond surprised of the regulatory scrutiny that's going to come down on these guys. Then I can promise you. Mark, can I ask you a question? Do you believe there was any willful neglect at silvergate or do you believe is assistance and controls issues of failure to apply procedures or insufficient procedure? I'm trying to just distinguish between willful. They're one final chapters retin Allen lane's going to say he was deceived as well. He's going to pull the benign neglect. What's your view? Do you think that was complicit somehow and engage in willful? No, I don't think they were, I don't think they were complicit. Okay, so it's a controls issue. It's a systems and controls policy procedure. I think these guys were operating on 1990 technology 1990 procedures. I think it's a publicly traded company that was run by a family owned bank. And I think these crypto exchange swindlers criminals took advantage of them essentially being like a drug mule. I think they found a sleepy bank that wanted to be become a big time player that thought it was going to be simple that grew like crazy that had zero controls. They weren't in on it. I don't think they were in on it. Now I think a couple directors are sideways. And I think a couple directors are going to have problems. And I mean, just think about it. Why would you have SPF is your spokesperson? And then after SDF, you go to another guy who has similar
The Crypto Overnighter
"allen lane" Discussed on The Crypto Overnighter
"Here, encrypted, it's 10 p.m. Pacific time, my name is nicodemus and welcome back to the crypto overnighter, where we take a nightly look at the crypto NFT and metaverse space, and keep in mind nothing in this show should ever be considered financial advice. Last night, we spoke for a bit about maple finance and some of the difficulties that they were running into. And I wanted to give you a bit of an update. Nexus mutual is a peer to peer insurance alternative. And they are expecting to take a loss on their investment in a credit pool on maple finance. Now, listeners from last night will remember that maple finance is a decentralized lending platform. And now the company warned about a potential loss of 2461 eth, which is around $3 million due to orthogonal trading default. Nexus has started to withdraw all of their funds from the affected pool, which represents about 1.6% of their assets. In August, nexus deposited over 15,000 eth worth around $19.3 million. That went into the credit pool on maple finance following a community vote. However, more of nexus funds are potentially at risk due to orthogonal trading default debt and oros global's failure to repay alone. Now nexus mutual is warning that it may take a loss on its investment in the credit pool on maple finance. What that means is that the potential losses due to orthogonal trading default on its debt and maples credit dashboard shows that the defaulted debt represents 56% of the outstanding debt on the rapid Ethereum credit pool. At present, there is only $3.1 million in cash deposits that are not tied up in loans. That limits nexus ability to withdraw funds. Maple has a ten day waiting period before depositors can withdraw capital. This news comes as the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX continues to impact DeFi lending protocols. Have you been paying attention to silvergate bank because something's going on there? And now, silvergate has always been kind of interesting from a crypto point of view. One interesting thing that happened is when they closed their door on the Libra, DM stablecoin project, they bought the intellectual property and said that they intended to create a coin using those assets. Well, things started going downhill for them on Monday morning as the bank's shares plummeted 3%. What happened was that Morgan Stanley downgraded its rating on silvergate capital to underweight. That's due to the risks arising from the bankruptcy of the crypto exchange FTX. The banks analysts believe that silvergate faces significant uncertainty about deposit flows in the near term. They estimate that the bank's digital deposits have fallen in about 60% so far in the fourth quarter. The demise of FTX could also lead to litigation and headline risk across the crypto industry. Allen lane is silver bank capital CEO. He published a public letter that said that the bank conducted quote extensive due diligence on FTX and its related entities, including Alameda research. He added that the bank followed all of the relevant regulatory procedures and investigated any potential untoward activity. Lane said that speculation and misinformation being spread by short sellers and other opportunists is trying to capitalize on the market uncertainty. Silvergate disclosed one month ago that FTX deposits made up nearly 10% of their $11.9 billion in deposits from digital asset customers. However, the bank does not appear to be a creditor to FTX. Now, lane said that the bank has a resilient balance sheet and ample liquidity. He added that the lender carries cash and securities in excess of their digital asset related deposit liabilities. Silvergate stock is down 53% over the last month and was little changed in after hour trade on Monday. Well, since then, U.S. Congress has gotten involved. Three U.S. senators, Elizabeth Warren, John Kennedy and roger Marshall have written to silvergate. They want answers about its supposed role in facilitating transfers between the exchange FTX and Alameda research. The senators letter come after allegations were made that sbf made large transfers of customer funds from the exchange to Alameda research. FTX and other companies reportedly held around 20 accounts at silvergate, according to a bankruptcy filing. The senators letter said that there were, quote, reports that mister bankman freed secretly transferred some $10 billion of customer funds to his trading vehicle automated research to fund risky bets, violating both U.S. securities laws and FTX owned terms of service. They also said that they were concerned about surrogates role in these activities because of reports suggesting that silvergate facilitated the transfer of FTX customer funds to Alameda. Shares were down another 6.15% and have touched a new 52 week low in Tuesday morning trade, adding to their roughly 50% decline since the FTX collapse. Silvergate has issued a statement saying that it was quote the victim of FTX and Alameda research's apparent misuse of customer assets. They said that they believe their full cooperation will help set the record straight. Now the bank has until December 19th to officially respond to the senators. SPF has reportedly hired Mark Cohen, a former federal prosecutor as his defense attorney. His spokesperson said the former CEO has retained Cohen amid a flurry of civil litigation from investors in the crypto exchange and investigations by U.S. lawmakers and regulators. Now Cohen is a cofounder of the law firm Cohen and gresser and was a former assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York. He also worked on the defense team for Ghislaine Maxwell. Wait, didn't she get convicted? Anyway, FTX group filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11 in the district of Delaware on November 11th. This was following a reported liquidity crunch in which the firm claimed billions in leverage, making it unable to meet withdrawal demands. Filing in bankruptcy court suggested FTX could be accountable to more than 1 million creditors. After the company's collapse, SPF has made several media appearances and has spoken to reporters many times. Despite criticism from some in the crypto space. The former CEO has apologized for his role in the exchanges downfall. He said that he plans to make it up to affected team members, but has not yet offered a concrete plan to compensate investors. John ray became the exchanges CEO in November. Now, one defender SPF doesn't have to hire is Kevin O'Leary. Because it was in an interview with Yahoo finance today that Shark Tank's mister wonderful called for calm following FTX is collapse. O'Leary stated that the exchanges former CEO should be considered innocent and less evidence emerges that he committed fraud. He called for FTX to be audited to reveal where they exchange his money went so that investors can get their funds back. On November 30th and December 1st, SPF took several interviews in which he claimed that he was not guilty of fraud, which led to backlash within the crypto community. However, O'Leary defended him in a new interview, saying that he is quote innocent until proven guilty. O'Leary explained quote, I am of the ilk, and of the group of people that says, you're innocent until proven guilty. That's what I believe, and I want the facts. And so if you tell me that you didn't, you did or didn't do something, I'm going to believe you until I find out it's a falsehood.
The Breakdown
"allen lane" Discussed on The Breakdown
"Dubious relationship between FTX and Alameda. Basically, the issue is that Sam during his extensive PR tour has been saying that before FTX was able to get its own banking relationships, it would have exchanged clients send money to Alameda instead. In a regulatory filing on Monday, silvergate acknowledged that it had processed wire transfers for Alameda. Silvergate CEO Alan lane is basically pushing back saying that whatever the intent was from Sam and co, Alameda had bank accounts with them, so when they got payments to Alameda, they processed them in credited to those accounts at Alameda. In other words, to the extent that these were FTX clients that should have gone to FTX accounts, that's FTX job, not silver Gates job. At least that's the claim that Allen lane seems to be making. Still, some aren't content with silver Gates answers to questions around due diligence. Count markets among those as silvergate stock prices down 84% this year and around 50% since all the FTX revelations came about compared to 23% in general for banks. Politicians are also getting up in this right now. Yesterday, senators Elizabeth Warren and John Kennedy, as well as congressman roger Marshall, wrote silvergate a letter demanding some answers. The letter cuts straight to the quick of the $10 billion of customer funds transferred to Alameda and what silver Gates potential role was. From the letter, quote, mister bankman fried has himself admitted that FTX customer funds were improperly transferred to Alameda's bank accounts. When asked how FTX customer deposits ended up in Alameda's accounts, mister free told vox that the company did not originally have a bank account, and so it directed customers to wire money to Alameda's account with silvergate in exchange for assets on FTX. According to mister bankman freed, executives at the company quote forgot about the scheme until the company imploded, telling a reporter, quote, it looks like people wired 8 billion to Alameda and oh God, we basically forgot about the stub account that corresponded to that, and so it was never delivered to FTX. Silvergate provided banking services to both Alameda and FTX, raising questions about the bank's role in facilitating the improper transfer of FTX customer funds to Alameda. quote some FTX customers continue to send wire transfers to Alameda silvergate account as recently as this year. It appears that silvergate did nothing to halt these activities. Simply put they write later, Alameda's depository account with your bank appears to be at the center of the improper transmission of FTX customer funds. Now where this led the congressman and senators, who was a set of questions. Were you aware that FTX was directing its customers to wire money to Alameda's account with your bank? Did silvergate flag a suspicious the movement of funds to Alameda accounts or between Alameda accounts and FTX or FTX affiliate accounts. Before November 11th, 2022, were you aware that Alameda research LLC was a distinct company from FTX and its subsidiaries. Has silvergate ever undergone an independent audit of its BSA anti money laundering compliance program. Did silvergate have any communication with representatives from Alameda FTX or FTX affiliated entities regarding concerns about the transfer of funds into silvergate. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera now I'm certainly not jumping on some screw silvergate bandwagon. There are plenty of people there already, including short seller Mark cahoots, who is one of the loudest voices calling out SPF for months. Still, silvergate has been one of the only banks actually willing to take the risk of banking crypto companies, and I'm going to be pretty pissed if they didn't behave improperly and get caught up in Sam's fallout. However, to the extent that they helped perpetrate the fraud, this really does need to be investigated, no matter how unpalatable or unfunded it seems. All of this continues to leave crypto in a very liminal in between moment. The industry is waiting to see justice served to Sam. But it's also waiting to see whether other institutions will fall. DCG and genesis are high on that list of WTF is going on. But in the vacuum there is emerging a clear category of winner and I'm not talking about binance, although clearly they're the last exchange standing when it comes to inside the industry itself. Know that likely winner is trad 5. That was reinforced today when Reuters reported that Goldman Sachs is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to invest in or buy outright crypto companies that are newly repriced, let's say, in the wake of MTX is collapse. Matthew McDermott, who's Goldman's head of digital assets, told Reuters that FTX is implosion, has heightened the need for more trustworthy, regulated cryptocurrency players, and big banks are seeing an opportunity to pick up business. In an interview McDermott said, quote, we do see some really interesting opportunities priced much more sensibly. On FTX, he said, it's definitely set the market back in terms of sentiment. There's absolutely no doubt of that. If the X was a poster child in many parts of the ecosystem, but to reiterate, the underlying technology continues to perform. Now, as of this recording apparently, the firm is doing due diligence on a number of different crypto firms, although they didn't specify which. So I think there are a few ways to look at this. The first is obviously as a vote of confidence, and Reuters itself sort of nails his angle, saying, while the amount Goldman may potentially invest is not large for the Wall Street giant, which earned $21.6 billion last year, its willingness to keep investing amid the sector shakeout shows its senses a long-term opportunity. Second, I think that this does show a trend but not a ubiquitous one. On the trend side fidelity recently opened retail crypto trading for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Fidelity is one of the largest asset managers in the world and this is a huge vote of confidence. Of course, plenty of skepticism still remains. Morgan Stanley CEO James Corman said at the Reuters next conference on December 1st, quote, I don't think it's a fad or going away, but I can't put an intrinsic value on it. The HSBC CEO told the banking conference in London that they have no plans to extend into crypto trading, and Jamie Dimon was on CNBC today telling them that crypto was just pet rocks and that they spend way too much time on it. Still, it's certainly seems like trad fire is likely to become one of the winners. Again, from Reuters, quote, the ripple effects from FTX collapse have boosted Goldman's trading volumes, McDermott said, as investors sought to trade with regulated and well capitalized counterparties. He said what's increases the number of financial institutions wanting to trade with us. I suspect a number of them traded with FTX, but I can't say that with cast iron certainty. Goldman also sees recruitment opportunities as crypto and tech companies shed staff, although the bank is happy with the size of its team for now. Now that same piece also suggests that some institutions that hadn't gotten into crypto yet are now looking at it because their customers are just over doing business with crypto native institutions. The Britannia financial group said that it's now building out cryptocurrency related services. CEO Mark Bruce told Reuters, quote, we have seen more client interest since the demise of FTX. Customers have lost trust in some of the younger businesses in the sector that purely do crypto and are looking for more trusted counterparties. So the question that I want to pause it to you is is this a problem? Or is it just unreservedly good? I think the answer is of course it depends. On the one hand, it's hard not to be gratified that in a world where many antagonistic voices are calling for the end of this whole experiment, there are still big firms taking a big picture view and investing for the long term. Relatedly, I think there's a fairly good argument that for citizens of countries with sophisticated banking and investing infrastructure, try 5 brokerages and platforms were always going to capture the mainstream. So this might have just accelerated the inevitable. On the other hand, there are challenges with having this category of actor take the pole position in the industry. They are clearly more focused on compliance and integrating with the existing system than in challenging that system. This could lead to very different priorities. For example, fidelity launched their retail trading product without the ability for customers to withdraw and self custody assets. There's also the question of how synthetic products around Bitcoin undermine and supply limitations. If everyone can just play financial games without ever actually having exposure to the underlying Bitcoin, does that diminish the value of its 21 million supply cap? This is something that folks like Caitlyn long have warned about in the past. And the fact that when all was said and done, FTX had zero Bitcoin on its balance sheet, suggests it's already a problem. Now, I do believe that this was sort of a problem that was always going to happen and it has just been accelerated, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem. This is something that Ben hunt from epsilon theory has discussed quite a bit. He wrote multiple pieces on this and yesterday said, if you don't see that the crypto quote unquote industry has become just as blindingly corrupt as the traditional financial services industry, it was supposed to replace, well, you're just not paying attention. What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance. The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything. Now, interestingly, on December 16th, 2020, as the last bull market was just getting up and running, I had human rights foundations Alex gladstein and Ben hunt on the show to debate will Wall Street ruin Bitcoin. Ben argued many of the same things he has argued around Sam over the last 6 months, even back then, although obviously in general at that time. He argued that Bitcoin was going to become just another financialized plaything for the already rich to extract value from. Gladstone's counterpoint was that even if that happened, it didn't change the value of Bitcoin as a transportable censorship resistant, hard to seize asset for people living under autocratic rule or in turmoil, conflict, et cetera. It's a really good conversation and I suggest you go back and listen. Like I said, December 16th, 2020, will Wall Street ruin Bitcoin with Ben hunt and Alex gladstein. I was reminded of it today thinking about all this, but especially when I saw a tweet from Troy cross. He wrote, do I want to live in a world where krugman Wall Street are laughing off Bitcoin? The EU and U.S. governments are trying to curb mining and mute demand through regulation while we see grassroots adoption throughout Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia? Yes, yes I do actually. And I think that that speaks to the redemptive side of all of this. The question of whether, even Bitcoin getting caught up in these financial games. In markets like the U.S., can on a fundamental level undermine what it's valuable for in the places that need it most. There's a lot that we could discuss around that, but we are so short right now, an optimistic thoughts that that's one that I am going to hold on to. For now I want to say thanks again to my sponsors next to IO, circle and kraken, and again today, crypto watch for supporting the show, and thanks to you guys for listening. Until tomorrow be safe and take care of each other. Peace
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"allen lane" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"Need to discuss silvergate bank. Silvergate has been under heavy scrutiny this year as one of the few banks to actually take on banking for the crypto sector. It's ties to FTX have been most recently in focus. Last month, silvergate was under the microscope as a solvency risk. They reported that FTX only deposited with them and that FTX represented less than 10% of the $12 billion to bank held for crypto clients at the end of September. Since then, the focus has shifted to the dubious relationship between FTX and Alameda. Basically, the issue is that Sam during his extensive PR tour has been saying that before FTX was able to get its own banking relationships, it would have exchanged clients send money to Alameda instead. In a regulatory filing on Monday, silvergate acknowledged that it had processed wire transfers for Alameda. Silvergate CEO Alan lane is basically pushing back saying that whatever the intent was from Sam and co, Alameda had bank accounts with them, so when they got payments to Alameda, they processed them in credited to those accounts at Alameda. In other words, to the extent that these were FTX clients that should have gone to FTX accounts, that's FTX job, not silver Gates job. At least that's the claim that Allen lane seems to be making. Still, some aren't content with silver Gates answers to questions around due diligence. Count markets among those as silvergate stock prices down 84% this year and around 50% since all the FTX revelations came about compared to 23% in general for banks. Politicians are also getting up in this right now. Yesterday, senators Elizabeth Warren and John Kennedy, as well as congressman roger Marshall, wrote silvergate a letter demanding some answers. The letter cuts straight to the quick of the $10 billion of customer funds transferred to Alameda and what silver Gates potential role was. From the letter, quote, mister bankman fried has himself admitted that FTX customer funds were improperly transferred to Alameda's bank accounts. When asked how FTX customer deposits ended up in Alameda's accounts, mister free told vox that the company did not originally have a bank account, and so it directed customers to wire money to Alameda's account with silvergate in exchange for assets on FTX. According to mister bankman freed, executives at the company quote forgot about the scheme until the company imploded, telling a reporter, quote, it looks like people wired 8 billion to Alameda and oh God, we basically forgot about the stub account that corresponded to that, and so it was never delivered to FTX. Silvergate provided banking services to both Alameda and FTX, raising questions about the bank's role in facilitating the improper transfer of FTX customer funds to Alameda. quote some FTX customers continue to send wire transfers to Alameda silvergate account as recently as this year. It appears that silvergate did nothing to halt these activities. Simply put they write later, Alameda's depository account with your bank appears to be at the center of the improper transmission of FTX customer funds. Now where this led the congressman and senators, who was a set of questions. Were you aware that FTX was directing its customers to wire money to Alameda's account with your bank? Did silvergate flag a suspicious the movement of funds to Alameda accounts or between Alameda accounts and FTX or FTX affiliate accounts. Before November 11th, 2022, were you aware that Alameda research LLC was a distinct company from FTX and its subsidiaries. Has silvergate ever undergone an independent audit of its BSA anti money laundering compliance program. Did silvergate have any communication with representatives from Alameda FTX or FTX affiliated entities regarding concerns about the transfer of funds into silvergate. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera now I'm certainly not jumping on some screw silvergate bandwagon. There are plenty of people there already, including short seller Mark cahoots, who is one of the loudest voices calling out SPF for months. Still, silvergate has been one of the only banks actually willing to take the risk of banking crypto companies, and I'm going to be pretty pissed if they didn't behave improperly and get caught up in Sam's fallout. However, to the extent that they helped perpetrate the fraud, this really does need to be investigated, no matter how unpalatable or unfunded it seems. All of this continues to leave crypto in a very liminal in between moment. The industry is waiting to see justice served to Sam. But it's also waiting to see whether other institutions will fall. DCG and genesis are high on that list of WTF is going on. But in the vacuum there is emerging a clear category of winner and I'm not talking about binance, although clearly they're the last exchange standing when it comes to inside the industry itself. Know that likely winner is trad 5. That was reinforced today when Reuters reported that Goldman Sachs is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to invest in or buy outright crypto companies that are newly repriced, let's say, in the wake of MTX is collapse. Matthew McDermott, who's Goldman's head of digital assets, told Reuters that FTX is implosion, has heightened the need for more trustworthy, regulated cryptocurrency players, and big banks are seeing an opportunity to pick up business. In an interview McDermott said, quote, we do see some really interesting opportunities priced much more sensibly. On FTX, he said, it's definitely set the market back in terms of sentiment. There's absolutely no doubt of that. If the X was a poster child in many parts of the ecosystem, but to reiterate, the underlying technology continues to perform. Now, as of this recording apparently, the firm is doing due diligence on a number of different crypto firms, although they didn't specify which. So I think there are a few ways to look at this. The first is obviously as a vote of confidence, and Reuters itself sort of nails his angle, saying, while the amount Goldman may potentially invest is not large for the Wall Street giant, which earned $21.6 billion last year, its willingness to keep investing amid the sector shakeout shows its senses a long-term opportunity. Second, I think that this does show a trend but not a ubiquitous one. On the trend side fidelity recently opened
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"Three's a dash affordable insurance. Com Affordable Insurance new drivers welcome Right. We're seeing a little bit of rain right now. The National Weather Service says there are showers in Bedford. We're seeing showers in Mars field. Worcester is seeing a little bit of rain as well. Otherwise cloudy skies We could see a break of sunshine today. I don't think it's going to be long lived. And then here comes tonight. Friday night. Are you headed out? Going to be cloudy sticky with patchy fog Low 67, Then tomorrow, low clouds patchy thought to start high 85 warming up to 90 by Sunday. We have a special weekend weather outlook for you coming up a little later on this half hour. Gunfire on the North Shore PVT. Police are searching for suspects. WNBC TV's Lisa Gresh e says the violence hit two neighborhoods. Police here in PVT are investigating a reported shooting have been scouring two separate scenes, and right now it's unclear if the two scenes are related. One of them isn't far from where I'm standing the police station at all on Allen's Lane and Washington Street investigators surrounding a car that appeared to have bullet holes in the driver's side door, blocking off the intersection completely. The second scene less than two miles away on veterans Memorial Drive. Least focusing on another vehicle there and its back window shattered. At one point. Investigators were looking underneath the car nearby, checking what appeared to be from more bullet holes. One victim was serious wounds is at mass general, the other treated for non life threatening injuries. Hours before sentencing a legal blow to former Minneapolis police officer Derek Show.